Tainted
by Death's Soulmate
Summary: An OC's thoughts on being a mutant over a four year span. OneShot.


Tainted

Summary: This is written in the perspective of an Oc who's a mutant.

Disclaimer: I don't own X-Men: Evolution

"Mutants."

That word always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Mutant means misshapen, deformed, distorted, twisted, warped, perverted, abnormal, perverse (which itself also means wicked, bad, mean, vicious), freakish, wrong. Wrong. In our world it's wrong to be a mutant. It's wrong to have abilities you never chose to have. It's wrong to be able to use them, no matter if you use them to help people. It's still considered wrong. The bad mutants are used as examples of why mutants are all evil. The good mutants and shunned and pushed aside because of mutant haters insatiable hatred for us. Us mutants.

I'm fourteen. My powers appeared four years ago. Four years ago on my birthday. I was of course ten years old. I was never a very happy child. Secretly inside my old home, abuse and tyranny reigned. I still have the scars. Both physical and emotional. Outside my home seemed like the perfect home. My parents seemed happily married and lived in a decent home with the white picket fence and a child they loved. But in reality I was the child they hated. My birth killed my mother's plan for a modelling career and she instead became a secretary and my father had to give up his dream of being a marine to instead do construction work, which he secretly hated. Both took out their anger on me physically and verbally. Never sexually. That's one thing that I can thank them for. I was never raped within my former household or outside it. And I never want to be raped. Ever.

But that day, on my tenth birthday, my parents allowed me to have a small birthday party. I invited twelve of my closest friends. Actually I invited the only three friends I had and they brought along a few of their own to make up the maximum amount of kids allowed at my party. My mother had everyone seated at the table and I blew out my ten birthday candles daintily, one by one. My mother warned me to do that because when I blew them out quickly she said that I 'looked like a leaf blower and therefore a disgrace'. When I finished blowing everyone clapped and I happily sat down in my chair. My father shared the cake while my mother poured the sodas. It was of course 7 Up, my favourite soda in the world. After everything was shared we started to eat and talk excitedly like little kids do. While I was drinking my soda I suddenly heard gasps. I looked down to see that my dress was soaked. But that wasn't the biggest shock. The biggest shock was that water kept running down my sky blue party dress and then I realized it was also running down my arms and worst of all it wasn't stopping. I dropped my cup and started to scream. Quickly the other kids realized that something was wrong and started to scream and run out of the yard. My mother grabbed me and ran into the house. She stopped up the bathtub and put me in it. It was a good thing too. Just then I lost my solid form. I lay in the tub a shapeless clear liquid able to see everyone despite no longer having a visible face or eyes for that matter. If no one knew that what was in the tub used to be a female ten-year old human, they would've pulled the plug and flush me down the drain without a second thought.

I was like that alone for hours because my mother had ran screaming the moment I turned into this liquid thing. My party dress still clutched to her chest. Plus we had a clock on the wall in the bathroom and I noticed that it was 2:45pm and my party had started at 2:15pm. So it took less than half an hour for me to turn into some crazy freakish thing. I had no idea what had happened to me. Except for the fact that I was no longer solid or human. I cried for a long time. I was worried. I was lonely. But most of all, I was scared.

I was able to see that night came and went because of a nearby window. Suddenly the door opened for the second time. I immediately looked at the clock. It was 2:16pm. Was fate trying to play a sick joke on me? Having someone re-enter the bathroom one minute after my birthday had started yesterday? If I could I'd have said some choice words to fate. Unfortunately since my mouth was also gone I could no longer speak. All I could do was lay floating in a bathtub, see as far as I was allowed to from the bathtub and hear whatever sounds I could hear from the bathtub. I heard something like wheels coming towards me and soon I saw a bald headed man in a wheel chair looking down at me.

He told me that he was Professor Xavier and he ran a place for people like me. Then he gave me the most devastating news of my life. He told me that I was a mutant. It seemed that I had the ability to change my body into liquid. It was just that right now I couldn't control it. I was very upset of course but he calmed me a bit by letting me know that he could hear my thoughts. Actually scratch that. I immediately panicked and told him to get out of my head and called him jerk and a freak. He however remained calm and told me that my parents decided that it was best that I go with him. I was angry and hysterical. I didn't want to leave the only family I knew. No matter how bad it was. I wanted to be with my parents. My family.

Unfortunately it wasn't for me to decide. I was taken away and it took me six months to be able to finally hold my physical form for more than a few minutes. Then four more months to be able to keep it for a few days. This of course meant that certain activities like sleepovers and most parties were restricted to me. But I didn't mind much. I wasn't allowed to go to those things while I lived with my parents. The only parties I went to were my own. And I had only two of those, the one that I had before my tenth birthday was a party on my fourth year. I had mostly relatives at that one. But by my tenth birthday my parents had estranged themselves from all relations because they knew about the abuse and didn't like it. So from the age of seven I never got to see any of my relations again and of course none were at my tenth birthday party. But I was certain that they'd find out one way or another that I was now a freak. By my eleventh birthday I could do a few interesting things with my powers. But I didn't care. I felt dirty, tainted for being a mutant. I refused to use my powers unless I had to practice to further be able to control my powers and keep a solid form. I definitely didn't want to be an X-Men. I made that abundantly clear to Professor Xavier before he even asked. Needless to say I was under poor terms with most of the others who boarded there with the exception of Storm and Professor Xavier. I had no bad confrontations with the Beast, but his form scared me so I stayed away.

I never allowed anyone to celebrate my birthday because it brought back painful memories of me losing my worthiness and become a worthless mutant. I was thankfully home schooled and I kept mostly to Storm and myself. She was very kind to me and never judged me. Professor Xavier didn't either but he kept dropping hints about me using my powers to help others that just pissed me off. I didn't want to use my powers at all. End of story.

My twelfth birthday came and went without any celebration. I was happy about that. No sense in celebrating a cursed day. The birth of my freakhood. I now rarely spoke to one of the teen boarders. His name was Kurt. He had to wear a special watch thingie to make him look human. I was used to his true form by now. But I still felt better when he was in his more human form. I never told him that though. I didn't want my personal feelings to hurt his own. Besides it was nice to have a guy friend for a change. I had gone to an all girl private school and my parents kept me away from boys unless they were related to me. Most kids at my old school told me that I was going to be gay. That offended me. I liked guys before I was ten, when I became ten and now at twelve I still did. But they just weren't at the top of my list in priorities. I wasn't raised that way and I also saw first hand what disaster a mismatched couple can bring through my parents. I was going to be very careful when I started to have romantic relationships. Even more so if we became steady. I never wanted to get married. Look what happened to my parents? And I was never ever going to have kids. They seemed to cause nothing but trouble plus I didn't want to risk bringing a mutated child into the world. No way. I told Kurt bits and pieces of my past and he felt sorry that I was abused. I told him not to worry about it and that it was the fact that my parents no longer wanted me because I became a mutant that truly hurt me, not the abuse. Even though secretly I didn't blame them because I didn't even want myself (I didn't tell Kurt this of course). He was really nice about it and even though we didn't talk often we had friendly talks when we did. Part of the reason we didn't talk much was because of this other girl who seemed to be a good friend of his despite their frequent disagreements and her rumoured horror cooking (well rumoured until one of her cookies that Wolverine secretly passed to me to throw away was so heavy that it tore through my pocket when I hid it there). She and I never got along. She was one of those all bitter that I wasn't accepting my powers and didn't like the whole mutant thing. I never decried mutants openly but she along with most of the teen boarders take it so personally. Well Rogue was always the exception to that but she and I never became friends either. But that was because we had different interest. Hers was in goth, mine wasn't, simple as that. Well this valley girl named Kitty was very close to Kurt despite her awful cooking and my personal opinion of her rather silly and annoying attitude. Teens weren't supposed to be so childish and that upset if their privacy wasn't always guaranteed. We might've lived in a mansion but we had more than six teens there minus the adults. Unless your mansion's the size (or half) of Africa I don't see how much perfect privacy you could get. Worse yet with mutant powered teens who were very curious and often mischievous. She and I clashed more than once because once she snuck into my room and stole my diary. I caught her leaving my room and followed her to realize that she had taken it. I told Beast because he was the only adult there and we caught Kitty and others in the act of trying to open it. Cyclops and Jean had left with the other adults and Kurt and Rogue weren't among those who were involved in swiping my diary. I never told Kurt because Kitty begged me not to. The whole diary incident had happened three months before my twelfth birthday and I've never fully forgiven Kitty for it. But I know that Kurt's friendship is important to her. So I allowed her to keep that without any waves being caused by myself. Kurt understood that Kitty and I weren't friends and didn't push for me to hang around her and as far as I knew he didn't try vice versa. I didn't mind; I didn't want to be around her anyway.

By my thirteenth birthday the cry of anti-mutants groups was at an alarming peak. I didn't go out much before. Now I barely exited the institute much less leave the property. That night, like many other days now, anti-mutant protestors shouted their protest of anger and hate at us, the mutants. A part of me felt guilty because I agreed with most of what they shouted. About us being freaks and not deserving of being on the same planet that they were on. I was one of them once. I was normal, a human. I would've done anything to be one of them again. But they were other things that they shouted, things that I didn't like or agree with at all. Things like all mutants are wicked people who prey on non-mutants, that all mutants should be executed and or castrated upon discovery and other horrible things that I'd never wish upon anyone mutant or otherwise. It really upset me that people would say such things. I had heard most of it before but right now it really pissed me of. Then I thought about it and realized that these people were shouting out all these derogatory things on my birthday. It was bad enough that my birthday was also a reminder to me of when I first became a mutant. I didn't need these haters' words to remind me that I was now a mutant, too. I left my bedroom and went into the kitchen. I didn't know what I was doing. I pulled out all sorts of foodstuffs from the fridge, from the cupboards, from the shelves and then I got glasses plates, bowls and utensils. I didn't even realize that I had used my powers to help me reach some of the things until I heard a gasp and turned to see Storm. I then realized that I had used my powers to let the lower half of my body turn liquid and it moved around by itself getting some of the things on the high shelves. I hadn't even realized that I mastered being able to use my liquid form to pick up and carry solid objects. Now I knew. I returned the lower half of my body to normal and gave Storm a shrug. She soon shook her head and started to help me with the kitchen. By then I had decided what I wanted to do. Half an hour later Storm got everyone together and they went into the kitchen. They were surprised to see it fixed up for a party with lots of food, decorations, and fancy seating. Most of the teens looked dreary before they noticed the kitchen (obviously because of those protesters' words), but when they saw it their spirits lifted and they soon were pigging out on junk food and playing tunes from the radio I had brought down. I never told them that the party was my idea. Even though Professor Xavier figured it out, he only thanked me afterwards for lifting everyone's spirits during a trying time. Plus he thanked me for having microwave able dinners prepared because otherwise he'd be stuck eating junk food, which he didn't love very much. I laughed at that. The little party we had was really nice and I got to socialize a bit more with the other boarding teens. After that I decided to stop feeling like a tainted victim and accept what I was. A mutant.

Now at fourteen I sit by my window in the lonelier part of the mansion and watch the grounds. My bedroom has always been separated from the more active part of the mansion and I liked it that way. I didn't feel very much like socializing. Plus my mind was still on the whole issue of so many people hating us mutants. I hated that word. But I didn't hate mutants. And I no longer hated myself for being one. What I now hated were those who mercilessly hated us for something we didn't even chose. Many mutants were born from non-mutant parents. It's not something that's easily detected. It just happens. I guess there's probably some deep DNA thing or genetic coding that causes it. But I don't know much about genetics and I could care less about DNA. I just wanted people to stop hating us. We didn't choose to be mutants. But us here at the institute chose to be good people. I still didn't want to be an X-Men or use my powers unless I absolutely had to. But now I no longer felt myself to be some horrible freak and I could now hang around Beast and we often read Shakespeare together. I'm five foot seven now. I used to have brown hair, lightly tanned white skin and bright blue eyes. I still have the last two. But a little after I became twelve I dyed my hair blonde. Every time I looked in the mirror I used to see my mother's brown hair and her mother's blue eyes. I loved my grandmother, I didn't feel the same about my mother. So I decided to erase the last physical memory I had of her, which was the brown hair. A few people were surprised by the change but I told Professor Xavier why I did it and he allowed me to keep my hair blonde. I kept it platinum blonde of course and most people I meet on the street believe it's my natural hair colour.

Suddenly my bedroom door opens and I look to see who it is. It's Wolverine.

"Hey Jen," Wolverine said.

"Jenny," I reminded him since I hated being called that.

"Oh yeah," Wolverine said with a chuckle, "we're meeting downstairs," he told me.

"I'll be there in a minute," I told him and he nodded and left.

I looked over the grounds one more time. I hoped that it would just as beautiful and serene as this tonight. Unlike my last birthday. I sighed and headed to the usual meeting spot.

"Happy Birthday!" everyone shouted the moment that I entered.

I looked around to see everyone wearing a party hat except Wolverine and Rogue.

"You won't catch me dead wearing that thing," Rogue said immediately when my eyes fell on her, "but happy birthday anyway," she added and smiled.

I didn't smile back. I just looked around the decorated room with a tight face.

"Um, we also want to thank you for using your birthday last year to make us all feel better," Kurt spoke up, "we didn't know that it was your birthday then, though."

"I know how you feel about your birthday Jenny," Storm said honestly, "but since you've changed and accepted being a mutant," she continued, "I think you should also add celebrating your birthday again to your change, we all do," she added.

"Do you know why I refuse to celebrate my birthday?" I asked in a soft voice, "I refuse to celebrate because it reminds of when I became a mutant and my world was turned upside down and my parents finally had their fill of a child they never wanted and in barely a day gave me away," I said in a cracked voice before anyone could respond, "but last year we spent the night of my thirteenth birthday celebrating the fact that we would always be proud of who we are despite those who say we should feel different," I continued, "so in the spirit of that and the fact that I finally believe it's the ones who hate us that are tainted," I said almost tearfully even though it was in happiness, "where's my cake?" I asked and the room burst into laughter and I got lots of hugs and they helped me wipe away my tears.

Soon I was in front of my strawberry birthday cake with white frosting and fourteen blue birthday candles on top. I was about to blow them out when I remembered what my mother said about blowing them out daintily. I blew out those candles like the loudest leaf blower in history. Everyone around me laughed at how loudly I blew out the candles. I personally felt liberated.

"Let's Party!" several teens chorused and we partied until nearly nightfall.

I had wanted to help clean up. But being the birthday girl meant that Professor ordered me not to and I decided to instead just walk along side him as he went to check up on Cerebro.

"So you enjoyed your birthday party?" Professor Xavier asked me.

"Yes Professor," I said happily.

"I'm very proud of you Jenny Simmons," Professor Xavier said suddenly.

"You are?" I asked in surprise.

"Yes," Professor Xavier said, "you've matured to realize that your abilities aren't a curse nor do they make you any less human."

"I used to think that my powers made me worthless, tainted," I said.

"So you'll use your powers more?" Professor Xavier asked me.

"A bit," I told him, "but I'm still not into the whole X-Men thing," I added quickly.

"So you don't want to help us save lives?" Professor Xavier asked.

"On the contrary," I said, "I want to help in a more desk work kind of way," I revealed to him, "I mean, you must keep typed records of mutants you help or check up on," I continued, "maybe I could help file flies or something," I suggested.

Professor Xavier was quiet for a moment. I noticed that he was deep in thought.

"Well I wouldn't mind some help with a few things," Professor Xavier said slowly, "but you'll have to start small," he said seriously, "you're still in school," he reminded me.

"And I get home schooled here so it's even better," I said excitedly, "I'll be easy access!" I cried, "I'll work really hard Professor, I've always been great at whatever I set my mind to," I declared.

"I've seen from your grades alone," Professor Xavier pointed out, "but I want to ask you something," he said suddenly.

"What is it Professor?" I asked.

"When you're older," Professor Xavier said, "how do you feel about possibly being a counsellor?" he asked me.

"What?" I asked in surprise.

"I've noticed your interest in psychology," Professor Xavier said, "I just wondered if counselling in the future might interest you?"

"Who would I counsel?" I asked him.

"Incoming students who have problems accepting their problems," Professor Xavier told me, "persistent problems," he added.

"Oh," I said slowly, "are you sure that I could do that?" I asked him, "I've had that problem myself but…."

"That's why I believe you'd be perfect for the job," Professor Xavier told me, "you have personal experience and you'll be able to help others just based on that alone," he said, "along with training of course."

"Of course," I agreed, "um Professor?" I asked, "thank you."

"Your Welcome," Professor Xavier said in response, "even though you deserve most of the thanks for allowing yourself to mature into the happy mature young lady that you currently are," he told me.

"I have changed haven't I?" I said almost airily, "do you think the world will change it's opinion towards us Professor?" I asked suddenly.

"Someday, yes," Professor Xavier said confidently, "I believe in humanity," he declared.

"I do too," I said surprising myself, "your confidence is contagious," I told him and we both laughed.

"I will admit that towards us the world's belief system is um dare I say tainted," Professor Xavier deduced, "but something tainted can be made clean again," he continued, "and someday the whole world will accept mutants," he said, "we just have to be patient and wait."

"I don't mind waiting," I told him, "but in the meantime I'll do what I can to help other mutants feel proud of themselves despite what many others say about them," I promised, "and what they probably even say and think of themselves," I added softly.

"So you're willing to counsel?" Professor Xavier asked.

"Yes," I said firmly, "I'm willing to show others that they're not tainted."

We continued to walk in silence until we came to Cerebro I was about to walk away when the Professor surprised me by allowing me to go inside with him. I was told to remain still and I watched as he readied Cerebro for use then put on that silver helmet on his head.

Suddenly metal plates moved and soon it seems that we were floating in the middle of the room. Images started to appear around me and seemed to be images of many people of various ages suddenly becoming mutants.

_A man in a business suit suddenly became engulfed in fire._

_A little girl jumping on a trampoline suddenly falls through it creating a huge crater underneath it._

_A male teenager kneels on the ground covering his eyes and screaming. _

I continued watching the images of people suddenly breaking out with mutant powers. These were people who in the future I'd help accept their powers if I became a counsellor. That's when I made my decision. I was going to help them. I was going to make them realize that their powers didn't make them wrong or freaks of nature. I was going to let them know that unlike the majority of the world's thoughts they were not tainted.

The End


End file.
